Hundreds Are Arrested at Anti-Republican Demonstrations

Aseries of demonstrations rippled across Manhattan when protesters prepared to converge tonight on the Republican National Convention, as a day of planned civil disobedience erupted into clashes with police officers and led to the arrest of hundreds of people.

The wave of confrontations, which included a brawl with police at the New York Public Library, angry crowds massing in Midtown and screaming at delegates and the detention of hundreds of protesters near ground zero, created a day of disorder unmatched during a convention week marked by sustained protests against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

Today's protests stood in stark contrast to the enormous, mostly orderly antiwar march that drew hundreds of thousands of people to Manhattan on Sunday. But many of those protesting today had purposefully avoided seeking permits for their rallies and publicized their plans well in advance, leading hordes of police officers in cars, bikes, scooters and vans to flood various parts of the city primed to pre-empt much of the action before it could occur.

The protesters gathered at various locations, many with the goal of descending on the convention site at Madison Square Garden. But at the various staging areas - near Ground Zero, in Union Square, in Herald Square near Macy's, and outside the New York Public Library - the police began making arrests, sending the crowds into a frenzy. These confrontations followed several other events, some of which went of without incident with the police taking aggressive action to prevent disruptions.

``Today a number of anti-R.N.C. activities failed to materialize, including a takeover of the lobby of the Warwick Hotel, perhaps because of the police presence there,'' Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told reporters at a news conference early this evening.

Protesters and civil liberties lawyers expressed concerns over what they said were unfair and overzealous tactics in dealing with demonstrators who may not have had permits but were not acting violently.

``It's an example of the police suckering the protesters,'' said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to the arrest of some 200 protesters who said they thought they were abiding by an agreement they had negotiated with police as they marched from ground zero on Fulton Street.

``It was a bait-and-switch tactic,'' she added, ``where they approved a demonstration and the protesters kept up their end of the bargain. They undermined people's confidence in the police and that's a serious problem as we go forward.''

The day, loosely organized by an anarchist collective called the A31 Action Coalition, began slowly, with highly anticipated events proving less than fractious. Indeed, the cat-and-mouse between the protesters and police started early in the morning. Responding to word that anarchists planned to somehow disrupt the morning's trading, hundreds of police officers flooded the blocks surrounding the New York Stock Exchange before 8 a.m. Roughly an hour later, dozens of officers responded to an obscure corner near the exchange at South Williams Street and Mill Lane, where protesters had stretched a ball of yarn across the street.

Within minutes, 14 young people sat handcuffed and seated with their backs to a wall near the short pedestrian mall, surrounded by three or four times as many police officers. Several balls of red and yellow yarn were strewn about the street, and a boom box sat nearby with a sign on a bed sheet reading ``Celebrate the Power of Money.'' One of the protesters wore a pinstriped suit and a beret.

Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said of the protesters, ``A lot of them are from out of town, and I think it was reflected in the choice of intersections.''

But the protests gained intensity throughout the day, and by late afternoon, the tenor had clearly changed as the police appeared to adjust their tactics to deal with the spontaneous eruptions throughout the city and the crowds of demonstrators grew increasingly volatile as the arrests mounted.